Spiritual wickedness in high places

The news of the day is that al-Qaeda is back.
 
The most recent National Threat Estimate raises the specter of renewed activity by the group responsible for the attacks in the united states on almost six years ago.
 
The President is spinning this report in a very interesting way.
 
He would like to use the growing threat of al-Qaeda as justification for continued military action in Iraq.  In order to do that, he also has to deflect criticism that the war in Iraq is responsible for the renewed strength of al-Qaeda.  How did he do it? 
 
The first thing he did was to conflate the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq as one act rather than two.  He depended on the fact that only part of the most recent threat assessment was made public.  Finally he claimed that al-Qaeda would have been much stronger by now if it weren’t for our military actions.  The problem is that he provided no proof to back his claim.
 
When you try to dig through this spin to the facts, the picture changes.
 
As Richard Clark, a security expert in both the Bush and Clinton administrations, pointed out, the Bush administration was taking credit two years ago for the National Intelligence Estimate which portrayed al-Qaeda as broken and on the run.  Assuming that report is as accurate as this one, what changed?
 
Here are some facts.
 

1. All our government studies confirm that the war in Iraq has served as a primary recruiting and training ground for al-Qaeda.
2. Those same studies also confirm that al-Qaeda is as much a philosophy as it is a command and control organization.  So the continued existence of al-Qaeda inspires other fundamentalist Islamic organizations to also take up the cause through terrorist acts.
3. The war in Iraq took focus away from the war in Afghanistan.  This allowed the Taliban to regroup, create safe havens, and go on the offensive.
4. Our stature in the Muslim world has made it difficult for our ally Pakistan’s General Musharraf to aggressively pursue al-Qaeda strongholds on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
5. If we unilaterally attack al-Qaeda in Pakistan, we may cause enough internal unrest in Pakistan that the government falls and is replaced by a more fundamentalist regime.  If that happens, things become MUCH worse in the Middle East because Pakistan has a proven nuclear capability.
6. Because of our focus on Iraq, we’ve lost all momentum and leverage in the issue which is at the core of the problems in the Middle East.  That is the relationship between Israel and her neighbors.  That has allowed Iran and Syria to increase their influence which has resulted in the growth of Hezbollah and Hamas. 
7. According to the National Threat Estimate, the most likely source of terrorists willing to attack the United States is not al-Qaeda in Iraq, but Hezbulla in Lebanon.  That is Iran’s way to retaliate for what it perceives as threats from the US and Israel. 

Things seem to continue to worsen.   

The Bush administration appears to have maneuvered us into a position where we either risk the fall of the Musharraf government, or we allow al-Qaeda to continue to grow. If that weren’t bad enough, we also have the choice of allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons or deal with a second Islamic fundamentalist group funded by Iran and with the safe havens in Lebanon from which they can plan and execute large scale attacks on the United States.

So please tell me again how things are getting better and what we are winning in Iraq.

For those of you inclinded to pray, this is a good time to know that God is the source of all power, intelligence, and wisdom.  Man, made in His image and likeness, reflects all of these divine qualities in thought and action.  

For those of you included to vote, we need a change of direction which requires a change of philosophy. The Neo-con view of the world demonstrated by the Bush administration has failed.  Please spend the time to listen and learn what new approaches the current crop of Presidential candidates propose.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.